Tom "Smitty" Smith Interview, Part 2 of 2

DT: Smitty, when we were talking earlier you were explaining how the Bush position on climate change and the gasses that are contributing to it changed because of the role of campaign finance and vote delivery of a few precincts in West Virginia and I was wondering if you could talk about some of the campaign issues closer to home here in Texas and how campaign finance plays a part in environmental issues?00:01:54 - 2254

SS: Well, it-it plays a tremendous f-role in a significant number of issues, not just in terms of environmental issues, but in terms a whole wide range of consumer protection issues. This last session of the legislature, there was a major battle in Texas over limitations on citizens rights to go to court, whether they-when they were in-injured by a toxic chemical or by a defective product or by a bad doctor. And we have in-in the middle of a crisis here in Texas over increasing home owner insurance rates in-and medical malpractice rates and what we discovered was that one of the reasons that we're having increasing homeowners insurance rates a whole generation of homes, built in the last twenty years, more or less, are very, very susceptible to mold. And mold is being caused for a variety of reasons. Some due to building materials, but some due to frankly shoddily built homes, homes that leak, aren't water tight and tend to have water running 00:03:25 - 2254down their interior walls, getting the insulation wet, particle board and other construction materials that are good breading grounds for mold. Well, when you look at the-the problem what you discovered is that we have gone from a state that had a lot of what we typically call a pick up truck builders, you know, they have one truck and a couple helpers who build a home and have a lot of pride in-in the quality of their homes, to large const-large building companies-eight of them, that build about seventy percent of the homes in our urban areas off of, you know, half a dozen model plans that are built in identical communities in every city of the state of Texas, that are built in literally weeks with often green lumber, with ill trained help and a generation ago if the lumber had gotten wet, we would have put it out in the sunshine and let it dry or if it had rained during construction we would've left the building air out for several days if not a week to make sure you didn't grow mold in it. Today they just go ahead cover it up and forget about it and it becomes somebody else's problem.

Well these builders are getting sued 00:04:49 - 2254right and left over the mold and so they were going and crying to the legislature, help us, help us, get us out of this jam. And when you look at who's contributing to the campaigns of particularly Republicans, but not necessarily only Republicans, you see that there is a significant amount of money coming directly to campaigns from the large builders-the-the Weeklys, the Perrys, et cetera, et cetera, who were contributing to the campaigns of candidates. But then you look at another cut at the same data and you find that these same people are the major donors behind groups called-like Texans for Lawsuit Reform and Texans for a True Majority and other PACs and campaign-and other groups that engage in soft money contributions to races. And they are running a-attack ads and other kinds of media to influence the outcome of elections. And their payback is limits on their liability. So now it's much harder to bring a claim against a builder for building a bad home after this last session of the legislature you have to go 00:06:07 - 2254through a very lengthy arbitration process to be able to take your builder to court and if they've met certain standards, you just flat won't be able to do so.

Again the payback for the campaign contributions, when you look at who's giving the money in Texas, studies tend to indicate that the majority of the money in Texas comes from under fifty major donors and they're large builders, they're large chemical barons, they're large oil families, large trial lawyers and m-and devices manufacturers of medical products and devices, pharmaceutical companies. And these are the people who are m-most afraid of liability and who are attempting in a variety of different ways to cap their damages by getting the legislation passed that favor them. And so what you see on the environmental side for example is that the big oil companies, the big chemical companies and the big utility companies are in a position to work together to influence the outcome of elections by simply determining how they give their money and who they give their money to.

Now part of the problem is that most of us don't have a clue when you see Bob Perry or David Weekly that they are the owner of a large home building company or when you see 00:07:35 - 2254Tom Smith's name on a campaign contribution, it's hard to distinguish me from the other seventeen Tom Smith's in Austin Texas. I could be the doctor, I could be the real estate agent, I could be the lawyer, I could be the professor or I could be the environmental activist. Each of us-or many of us actually give campaign contribution and without having an occupation and an employer, it's hard to distinguish between those of us that might contributing because we are supporting insurance issues or those who are supporting the Texas Medical Association and their issues, or those that might be supporting the Texas Association of University Professors. And one of the things that we have been advocating for are clear-or m-making sure that the largest donors report who their who-what their employer's name is and what their occupation is. And during 00:08:37 - 2254the last session of the legislature we were able to get provisions passed that now require any donor of five hundred dollars or more to disclose their occupation and employer. We think this will probably get about three quarters of the money in Texas and probably get somewhere-a far fewer number of donors probably somewhere in the neighborhood of about twenty-five percent of the donors, but most of the money comes from a very few people.DT: And once you know this information, do think that there's shame attached to it or that there's just an understanding that that's politics, it's a dirty business? What sort of response do you think will come from the general public and from the press?00:09:24 - 2254

SS: I-without a doubt I think that knowing who the donors are makes a big difference in people's willingness to vote for a particular candidate. If people are aware that this particular candidate is heavily supported by the chemical and oil and the power companies, they may be much be less like to vote for that candidate than a person who may not have a very goo-well funded campaign, but is largely supported by teachers and by union workers and-and by small time business people. And we have seen in a variety of different occasions where the source of money has been a significant issue in campaigns. Typically it works something like this, where a particular candidate is tagged as a camp-a candidate supported largely by trial lawyer interests, but in-at various times for example in the valley a-saying that a particular candidate is supported largely by the growers may work against a candidate in a community that is largely-where the-the voting population is farm workers. So some of those kinds of issues really make a big difference in who gets elected in various races.

DT: Some of the dollars that are raised by PACs and trade groups and by individuals goes directly into the coffers of campaigns and elected officials, but I imagine some of it goes towards lobbyists. Can you talk about some of the leading lobbyists in the state and the turf they've chosen and the appeal they've got to the senators and representatives?00:11:34 - 2254

SS: There are a-approximately fourteen hundred lobbyists who register year around, three hundred and sixty-five days a year when the sessions-when the legislature's in session and when they're not. And there might be as many as about four thousand, forty-eight hundred who register when the legislature's in session. And typically the difference is that those who are here in frequently, but spend more than five percent of their time in a given calendar quarter or those who spend more than two hundred dollars in wining and dining have to register for lobbyists or as a lobbyist. So what you'll see is in-when the legislature's in session say the district manager for a local utility may choose to register for a lobby-as a lobbyist or someone who is here representing his particular real estate interest may choose to register. But the real, sort of, power is in those fourteen hundred registered lobbyists that here most of the time. A good number of them are former members of the legislature or like myself, former staffers who have gained some 00:12:54 - 2254experience in how the process really works by working in the capitol. And typically former legislators are among the most powerful. Some of them make more than a million dollars a session and-in fees for representing the interests of various parties and they will often have client lists that are the who's who of the business community and will often represent thirty, forty as many as sixty different paying clients at any given time. Typically a lobbyist will represent a-a-a type of industry. They may represent chemical companies, or they may represent insurance companies, but there are some that represent just about anybody who walks in the door and has-and-and wants to hire them.

Lobbyists persuade, not only on the basis of the arguments they're making on behalf of their clients, but because they can often times marshal large sums of large campaign contributions. I've been in meetings with people who lobby for trade associations for example who are lobbying on the same side of an issue I am and we're 00:14:17 - 2254out visiting during campaign season and they will either begin or end the evening by handing over a sheath of checks from various members of the trade association and here-and say here's a cont-some contributions from members of our associations who want to let you know that we've appreciated your support on our issues in the past. And while it's not a bribe, it certainly is a clear indication that perhaps if you're helpful to us in the future, we'll be helpful to you in the future as well. And everybody-and-and there's a standard joke around the capitol that, you know, says when's a bribe not a bribe? And the answer is when you report it as if-as a campaign contribution. And so there's a real clear understanding that it would be illegal to promise a vote or to take an action for a campaign contribution, but everybody's watching you and they'll know how you voted on an issue when it comes time to decide whether to back you the next time you run.

After twenty years in lobbying I've seen on a-a number of different occasions 00:15:30 - 2254however that organized people can beat organized money. Where you'll see a member of the legislator-legislature come out to a lobbyist and say I know you've been real helpful to me and I had told you earlier I'd be try-I'd try and help you on this bill, however I got trouble back home, you know, I'm getting letters from my constituents, I must have had twenty, twenty-five letters, you know what that means, there's thousands of people back home caring about this issue if I get twenty, twenty-five letters, all asking me to vote against this bill. He says I'm getting news paper reporters asking me whether I'm going to vote for or against this bill and as much as I'd like to be helpful to you, I've got to vote with my constituency on this issue. And so what you see is that there is an implicit oppor-there's always the opportunity where citizens can make a difference and can say-and a member will say to somebody who's supported him financially or her financially, I can't help you. I've got constituent trouble back home. DT: How do you drum up constituent trouble?00:16:37 - 2254

SS: Well that's one of my favorite things to do is drumming up constituent trouble. Typically when we're looking at an issue coming to the legislature one of the things we do is-is called power mapping. We sit down and take a look at who's going to make the decision on a given bill and often times you know pretty much who's going to be on a committee because they've been there before and there's no real race or the election has been decided and you know that a-a bill having to do with utilities is likely going to go to regulated industries or to business and commerce or what have you in the various House or Senate. And so you can sit down and say, well we've got eleven members from the Dallas-Fort Worth area for example, of the twenty-two who are going to decide this and then you've got a few over here in San Antonio and a few out here in Midland, Odessa or what have you and so you sit down and you figure out where you've got to put your campaigns 00:17:30 - 2254together. And then you start to take a look at your members and you figure out where they live, who they work for, where they go to church, where they shop, where their kids play soccer or if they-you know, or who they-who they hang out with, you know, where do they coffee, what clubs do they go to. And then you check your lists of your members or your association's members, you know, frequently we will partner up with Texas Impact which is a church-or Association of Progressive Church Members for example and find that some Texas Impact member goes to church with this member of the legislature or will work with the folks at Sierra Club. And we'll try and find somebody who can be a spokesperson on a particular issue that can reach that member back home and can get their attention.

I can give you a good example. There was a member of the legislature who was a chairman of a committee I had a bill pending in front of, or a number of bills pending in front of a-at-at one session. And he comes up 00:18:34 - 2254to me on a Monday morning and he says Smitty I give up and he says, I'll do whatever you want me to just let me eat dinner with my family. And I said, what are you talking about? He says, you know, I go to church, I get a sermon in the church and then I leave and I try to go to my car and your guys give me a second sermon, every Sunday it's been happening for months now. And I said-I-I said, oh yeah, tell me about it. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about but I figured if he thought I was responsible I was going to at least play along to see if I could figure out what was happening. And he says, you know, use-these Sierra Club guys you got, he says, you know, they're catching me between the church door and my car. And they're telling me what to do on each and every bill that I got coming up in my committee. I said and how bad is it? He says it's gotten so bad my wife is bringing a second car to church, she and the kids go home and I have to come home late, sometimes I don't even get Sunday dinner with my 00:19:29 - 2254family because your guys are trying to-or caught me between the-and-and I said so what do you want me to do? He says, just tell me what I need to do on Monday morning and call off your dogs. I said okay, I'll be glad to. And so we called and, you know, Kramer and explained to him, you know, we got a deal going and so I w-would go in Monday morning and talk to the Representative and explain to him what the issues were and he was much more willing to listen to me because he knew we could affect people in his church back home and that they cared enough to lobby him. And they would then say thank you to him if he did the right thing or they'd call him out afterwards and say Curtis we've got to talk to you as he was walking to his car and he knew that we could catch him back home where it really mattered.

And that kind of power mapping and organizing back home with people who matter and their af-affinity group makes a lot of difference 00:20:19 - 2254in the outcome of votes. And so what you end up trying to do is for every member that's got to deliver-you've got to deliver their votes is try and figure out if you've got a key player in their circle of acquaintances who cares about this issue, whether it be their doctor, their school teacher, somebody who stands on the sidelines for hours as their watching their kids run up and down and play soccer are often times the key people that they're going to listen to more than they will listen to you and y-I can sit down and talk to them about something, but if they're hearing about it from somebody back home then they know it's a big darn issue. DT: How do you do the power mapping as the demographics are changing in Texas and most environmentalist, unfortunately, appear to be white and yet a lot of the elected officials increasingly are Black or Hispanic and there may not be the overlap at the soccer game or at the church?00:21:21 - 2254

SS: Well, you know, I think that the assumption that our reach is only to middle aged white people isn't-isn't quite right. You know, it-the kinds of impacts that pollution has are most often felt, most keenly by people of color and low-income folk. But interestingly pollution doesn't respect party boundaries. And what we're beginning to find out is that key Republicans are now becoming more and more worried about air pollution. County judge in Dallas County, who had never been particularly active in worrying about air pollution was converted because his daughters-two of his daughters-two of the three of his daughters had asthma and couldn't run up and down the soccer field without having taken a-a asthma drug before they played their game and sometimes couldn't complete the game because they were wheezing so badly. And he became an advocate for reducing air pollution because of the experience of his children. 00:22:37 - 2254The Republican-the current Republican county judge ran against a liberal Democrat, her only issue was reducing air pollution, the only thing she ran on, her one issue and her campaign was if I'm elected I'm going to clean up air pollution. And we're seeing more and more that the emerging middle ground Republicans are susceptible to arguments that this is an important in-that health is being impacted by air pollution and that it's affecting their families and their children. And if we can get behind the money and get to their heart and get to them worrying about their kids or their grand kids, we're going to win this bill. DW: Did crossing party boundaries also work in the story you told about the fellow being bothered at church, can you get that personal if he was not a Democrat or a Republican? Would they just shut you out point blank on that one?00:23:38 - 2254

SS: Oh, no i-i-it works both ways. It, you know, it's clearly that both Republicans and Democrats will listen if you can figure out how to get to them back home. We were able to convince a key Republican senate member to carry legislation that promoted renewable energy because the environmental community in his hometown was well organized and was bipartisan. And they were able to get to his church. They were able to get to his country club. They were able to get to his professional association. And in each of those various locations said, you know, we're in a-we have an opportunity to make a down payment on the next generation of energy production here in Texas and we need your assistance and your leadership and he rose to the leadership challenge because of his-the contacts made back home.DW: In health issues like pollution you can see because the children get asthma easy enough, what about where the health threat is not as visible and is more insidious such as cancers that will be caused by radiation? Is it as easy to get the support in the health issue for the nuclear thing as it is for air and water?00:25:07 - 2254

SS: There's a good ex-the-that-a very good example. The recent fight over the deciding of the nuclear waste dump in Andrews County is a good example of how one citizen can make a difference and yet how insidious money is in this process. It's unclear as we sit here who's going to win the contract to operate the newly privatized nuclear waste dump out in West Texas and we believe it'll be sited in Andrews County since they won it. But the leading ki-company is a company called Waste Control Specialist that is heavily funded by Harold Simmons who is a billionaire out of the Dallas area who hired a team of some twenty-four lobbyists including some ex-congressman and some ex-regulators to trawl the halls of the legislature. And they moved a lot of political money around and particularly were very helpful in terms of funding some of the swing races during the last legislative session and contributed heavily to the Speaker's race and his attempts to make sure-to gain control of the House. The-and it was clear by the volumes of votes against or f-of the environmental community on this that the legislature was deathly afraid of Harold 00:26:35 - 2254Simmons and his capacity to fund campaign-ca-campaigns against him-or against a member of the legislature.

However in the debate after the-on the second or the third reading of the bill, after the bill had already passed one day, there was a surprising moment. We were-had attempted to require all nuclear waste to be stored above ground in monitored and retrievable casks in bunkers much like bombs were stored from the second world war up until the end of the cold war, and had been unsuccessful in attempting to get that amendment on because typically it had been the liberal Democrats carrying those amendments. The-one of our colleagues said, you know, we've had an activist in Vicki Truit's district who has been going to work her on nuclear waste issues, I wonder if you get Miss Truit to carry that amendment. Vicki is a conservative Republican from Dallas. And we went to her and she had heard from her constituent the night before, that had been very disappointed in her voting for this bill a-and she had as-he asked her, is there anything you can do to make it less damaging? And so she was 00:28:04 - 2254smarting. He had talked to her two or three times about his concerns about radioactive waste and so she had heard from a constituent, just the night before. I went to her as she was walking in the door and said, would you consider carrying an amendment to require all the waste to be above ground, monitored and retrievable? And she carried that amendment, got over a hundred votes to put it on the bill and caught the lobby absolutely flat footed for the bill. They were quite shocked they we had been successful and they never thought that a Republican of Miss Truit's stature in the leadership would carry this particular amendment for us. She's very proud of herself and felt like she had accomplished something and this goes to show that you can't quite figure out on party lines who's going to be able to help you. Unfortunately we lost that particular provision in the Conference Committee, but for a brief moment constituent pressure won the day. And had we'd been able to find a similar player who could've gotten the-the majority members of the Conference Committee, I probably could've kept it in there. DT: Can we try and get your read on what the coming issues in the future session? Is it going to be more discussion about air quality and energy and radioactive waste or are there going to be new topics that may come up for environmental concerns?00:29:36 - 2254

SS: Well, i-i-in the upcoming sessions, clearly the issue of energy and-is going to be a critical issue. Our public utility commission is once again undergoing a thorough review in the 2005 session and so we expect it to-there will be a robust debate over whether we should expand our Renewable Portfolio Standard and put pollution limits on power plants both those that are coming on line and those that are pre-existing. But it-that debate is even further heightened by the outbreak of the various wars we have had and the question of how we are going to continue to fuel our automobiles and the questions of how our transmission grid is built and maintained after the massive black outs that we experienced in the Northeast this summer. And we'll be proposing that we meet most of our needs for additional power through energy efficiency and that we literally lighten the load on our transmission system rather than building billions of dollars of transmission lines that may not be needed. Air quality is going to be a big issue for the next ten years without a doubt as we struggle to reduce our emissions to levels that allow us to live safely on the Earth like we did when we were children. And 00:30:56 - 2254we'll end up spending a lot of time on those issues.

But I think the big fight of our generation is clearly going to be coming a-around the issues of water and water capacity and water quality. And that will be exacerbated by global warming. And what our biggest fear as the temperature rises the amount of available water will inevitably decrease. The Rio Grande will have an increase in terms of evaporation from about half of the water that's in the Rio Grande at any given time to about seventy-p-five percent decreasing by fifty percent the amount of water that makes it down to the coast in good years, at a time when the Rio Grande runs dry most of the summer because the amount of water that is committed exceeds it's car-it's capacity today. Many of the aquifers that we are relying upon for our drinking water are likely to not be replenished because the pattern of rainfall is expected to change and we'll have significant periods of drought followed by rains like we saw in, I think it was in October of 2000 where we had twenty 00:32:19 - 2254inches of rain in a twenty-four hour period leading to massive floods, but far exceeding the ability of the aquifer to recharge through the fissures and cracks that allow the water into the aquifers before it runs off to the sea. And so there will be water battles and we're seeing the first harbingers of those in our generation as more and more water supplies are being bought up by private companies, captured and then the water moved into our cities through pipelines from the panhandle into the Dallas-Fort Worth area through pipelines from the Brackettville area into San Antonio. And that's going to become ultimately the issue that determines whether certain communities thrive or dry up. DT: Considering how challenging some of these issues are, what sort of advice would you give to people in the coming generation to carry on this work and try to succeed in protecting the environment?00:33:25 - 2254

SS: You can make an enormous difference if you believe that you can challenge and change some things, you will probably be successful. We have-I have seen in my lifetime that typically we accomplish a lot of what we set out to do and what I've seen time and time again is that organized can beat organized money and can break the backs of the power-it isn't always the-the results you anticipated, typically the-you can-you should and-ask for far more than you expect to get. You will find time and time and time again that you'll lose, but that two, four, six years down the line, that your crazy idea has become so much part of the mainstream that you win and everybody scratches their heads and says we should've done this years ago, why haven't we?

And that when you begin to take a look at challenging the powers that be as a single individual often you can't do it, but when you look at who else is affected by the same problem, typically you 00:34:52 - 2254can find powerful allies that will help you accomplish those goals.

When you begin to take a look at the way you could spend your life, you can spend your life working for some bank, or working for some chemical company and at the end of the life, you'll sit back and scratch your head and say, what have I accomplished? I've made somebody else rich. Or you can spend your life helping to make the world a better place and having a vision for what you'd like the world to be like and become and you probably will be successful in making some changes in the way things are. It's a choice that you have to make. And it's a choice that's incredibly enriching to choose to attempt to make the world a better place.

You're not going to win every battle. You're probably won't win most of the battles the first time around, but in the end you can be successful in changing the way things are. You just have to put your mind to it, your heart to it and know that you're right and that eventually you can make a difference in the way things are and it will be the bet-the-it will better the world.DT: Thanks for doing your part to make things better.SS: Thank you.DT: I appreciate your time.[End of Reel 2254][End of Interview with Smitty Smith]